I am trying to examine how fire is interacting with woody plants having height less than 30 cm and root collar diameter less than 3.2 cm. I have two categories of saplings 1) seedlings and 2) juveniles of clonal root-sprouters and root-crown resprouters. As part of this I would like to see the impact of fire on seedlings and clonal resprouters separately. My question is, if sapling's root collar (RC) is visible it is not difficult to differentiate them but what if they RC is not visible?